Florence-Lauderdale Public Library Digital Archive
Interview with Paul Miller
July 12, 2011
Florence, Alabama
Conducted by Clint Alley and Rhonda Haygood
Clip 2
Clint Alley: Well, tell us about Iwo Jima if you don't mind.
Paul Miller: It was tough. I landed in the fifth wave and the waves are about five minutes apart. That means I missed, I missed the first twenty-five minutes of the battle of course. But it had just started good when we got there, got to the beach. Ah, the Japs tried a little different tactic there. They always met the Marines at the beach when they landed and tried to wipe them out. And then they had banzai attacks. But this was only 650 miles from Tokyo so they were fighting to defend the homeland and every Jap about killed ten Marines before he died. A lot of them did. I, I was a boot amongst a bunch of Marines who knew what battle was like and I didn't. And when we hit the beach, we got out and the first thing I saw was a dead Marine. He was kneeling in the sand. He had his rifle with a bayonet on it like that. From here up his head was missing. Ah, when, when we made one of our dry runs at Saipan on the way we stayed overnight. We stayed several days aboard ship in, at Saipan and we made many runs at the beach like we were gonna make landings but we turned around and came back before we actually landed again. We did that for several days. And our landing craft nearly sank at Saipan so they took me and one other Marine and our little roll of wire or switchboard or whatever we had and put us in another landing craft. So, we were all alone and our, our team officer told us when we got ashore, he said, "This is going to be the worst landing we've ever made. You get, get ashore, find a hole and stay in it. We’ll find you. Don't look for us." And they did. I don't, I don't know, you have no concept of time in situations like that but it must have been several hours that they finally found us and all of us had landed on the wrong beach. We were near the extreme right end of the beach and we were up there where - General Cates, the commanding general of the 4th Division, they said that as he was watching the landing from his ship, that he, ah, he said, "If I knew the name of that extreme right-hand man in that extreme right squad, I'd write him a citation right now." I was not that far up, but I was pretty close. And that, they concentrated the fire on, after about the third wave they started concentrating the fire on the beach. So it was happening soon as we got there. And we found a hole like the, our officer told us we should. And we sat there until they found us. Again you have no concept of time, so I don't know how long it was. We found it must have been a sixteen inch shell or maybe a bomb, created a big crater and we got in that hole with a bunch of other Marines that were there. We had been there a few minutes and somebody yelled, "Jap!" And we looked up and the first one I saw was running away from us and he threw a grenade up on top of the terrace above us. If he had of thrown it in our hole he would have killed a dozen or more. But I saw him go out of sight over the terrace. And of course everybody shot at him and somebody threw a grenade and I saw his helmet go up in the air and come back down. So we got him I guess, I never saw the body.
CA: Hum. Okay. And ah, so after the landing was over, what did you do on Iwo Jima then? PM: The company I was in, our responsibility was to land before the communications teams for the combat battalions got there. We established initial communications between the beach and the ships, and between the beach and the front lines. Well the front lines weren't very far so we could yell and they could hear us. But we, the first thing we did after I got back with my team was to start stringing wire up the beach to establish inter-battalion communications. And of course, as soon as we'd get one laid they would land a tank and he'd run across our lines and we'd have to redo it. But I remember running up that beach. We had three of us on a roll of wire, stringing wire from one command post to the other. And you couldn't walk in that sand. It, well you mired up to your ankles and you’d, it was impossible to run but you could manage to walk a little bit. And we, two men held that reel of wire, with one pulling the wire off of the end of it. And when one of the two men holding the reel of wire got so tired he dropped, he took the place of the men behind pulling the wire off and that man took his place carrying the reel of wire. I don't know how much it weighed, maybe fifty or sixty pounds. Two men carrying it, but running in that sand it was very hard to do. So that was what I did for quite a few days.
CA: Un-huh. Okay. The other, we talked to a man the other day who said that Iwo Jima was nothing more than just a rock. Is that the impression you had of it? It was just kind of—?
PM: It was a dirty little island. The beaches were black sand.
CA: Um. Black sand.
PM: Ah, volcanic ash really, mixed with sand and it was just, it was impossible to dig a foxhole and it was impossible to run and after you got on up into the island there, it was, there was a lot of sulfu— sulfurous rocks. In fact, I have a book at home that - I saw it, at the time I didn't know until later that they had made a picture of it. People had, pretty artistic Marines I guess, had made engravings in this sulfuric rock. One was monkeys with the, you know, like that.
CA: Um-hm.
PM: And, uh, engraved on there with the monkeys was see no Iwo, hear no Iwo, do no Iwo, no mo Iwo.
CA: That's creative.
PM: Very.

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Transcriptions

Florence-Lauderdale Public Library Digital Archive
Interview with Paul Miller
July 12, 2011
Florence, Alabama
Conducted by Clint Alley and Rhonda Haygood
Clip 2
Clint Alley: Well, tell us about Iwo Jima if you don't mind.
Paul Miller: It was tough. I landed in the fifth wave and the waves are about five minutes apart. That means I missed, I missed the first twenty-five minutes of the battle of course. But it had just started good when we got there, got to the beach. Ah, the Japs tried a little different tactic there. They always met the Marines at the beach when they landed and tried to wipe them out. And then they had banzai attacks. But this was only 650 miles from Tokyo so they were fighting to defend the homeland and every Jap about killed ten Marines before he died. A lot of them did. I, I was a boot amongst a bunch of Marines who knew what battle was like and I didn't. And when we hit the beach, we got out and the first thing I saw was a dead Marine. He was kneeling in the sand. He had his rifle with a bayonet on it like that. From here up his head was missing. Ah, when, when we made one of our dry runs at Saipan on the way we stayed overnight. We stayed several days aboard ship in, at Saipan and we made many runs at the beach like we were gonna make landings but we turned around and came back before we actually landed again. We did that for several days. And our landing craft nearly sank at Saipan so they took me and one other Marine and our little roll of wire or switchboard or whatever we had and put us in another landing craft. So, we were all alone and our, our team officer told us when we got ashore, he said, "This is going to be the worst landing we've ever made. You get, get ashore, find a hole and stay in it. We’ll find you. Don't look for us." And they did. I don't, I don't know, you have no concept of time in situations like that but it must have been several hours that they finally found us and all of us had landed on the wrong beach. We were near the extreme right end of the beach and we were up there where - General Cates, the commanding general of the 4th Division, they said that as he was watching the landing from his ship, that he, ah, he said, "If I knew the name of that extreme right-hand man in that extreme right squad, I'd write him a citation right now." I was not that far up, but I was pretty close. And that, they concentrated the fire on, after about the third wave they started concentrating the fire on the beach. So it was happening soon as we got there. And we found a hole like the, our officer told us we should. And we sat there until they found us. Again you have no concept of time, so I don't know how long it was. We found it must have been a sixteen inch shell or maybe a bomb, created a big crater and we got in that hole with a bunch of other Marines that were there. We had been there a few minutes and somebody yelled, "Jap!" And we looked up and the first one I saw was running away from us and he threw a grenade up on top of the terrace above us. If he had of thrown it in our hole he would have killed a dozen or more. But I saw him go out of sight over the terrace. And of course everybody shot at him and somebody threw a grenade and I saw his helmet go up in the air and come back down. So we got him I guess, I never saw the body.
CA: Hum. Okay. And ah, so after the landing was over, what did you do on Iwo Jima then? PM: The company I was in, our responsibility was to land before the communications teams for the combat battalions got there. We established initial communications between the beach and the ships, and between the beach and the front lines. Well the front lines weren't very far so we could yell and they could hear us. But we, the first thing we did after I got back with my team was to start stringing wire up the beach to establish inter-battalion communications. And of course, as soon as we'd get one laid they would land a tank and he'd run across our lines and we'd have to redo it. But I remember running up that beach. We had three of us on a roll of wire, stringing wire from one command post to the other. And you couldn't walk in that sand. It, well you mired up to your ankles and you’d, it was impossible to run but you could manage to walk a little bit. And we, two men held that reel of wire, with one pulling the wire off of the end of it. And when one of the two men holding the reel of wire got so tired he dropped, he took the place of the men behind pulling the wire off and that man took his place carrying the reel of wire. I don't know how much it weighed, maybe fifty or sixty pounds. Two men carrying it, but running in that sand it was very hard to do. So that was what I did for quite a few days.
CA: Un-huh. Okay. The other, we talked to a man the other day who said that Iwo Jima was nothing more than just a rock. Is that the impression you had of it? It was just kind of—?
PM: It was a dirty little island. The beaches were black sand.
CA: Um. Black sand.
PM: Ah, volcanic ash really, mixed with sand and it was just, it was impossible to dig a foxhole and it was impossible to run and after you got on up into the island there, it was, there was a lot of sulfu— sulfurous rocks. In fact, I have a book at home that - I saw it, at the time I didn't know until later that they had made a picture of it. People had, pretty artistic Marines I guess, had made engravings in this sulfuric rock. One was monkeys with the, you know, like that.
CA: Um-hm.
PM: And, uh, engraved on there with the monkeys was see no Iwo, hear no Iwo, do no Iwo, no mo Iwo.
CA: That's creative.
PM: Very.